Marbàn by J H Martin

J H Martin is from London, England but has no fixed abode. His writing has appeared in a number of places in Asia, Europe and the Americas.
Website: acoatforamonkey.wordpress.com


Marbàn

It is beautiful. Truly beautiful.

All I can hear is the cry of birds and nothing else.

No cars. No sirens. No planes. And no machinery.

Yes. It is strange to think that these rusted gates in front of me were the entrance to the private grounds of some-Lord-or-other. An enclosed and expensive wonderland of statues, swimming pools and tennis courts. A place which like so many others around the world, now looks like some obscene relic from an age of gilded ignorance.

Now the bath-stone walls of the mansion and this gravelled driveway are no longer home to a resource-rich family and its limousines but to vines and weeds and roots. Springs of green that are rising up from the earth to reclaim what is rightly hers.

Stood on the cracked patio, where children used to play with the latest toys, I see the tops of the canopy which has taken back the skyline from all that gruesome glass and steel. At nearly seventy-years-old, I never imagined that I would see this. It wasn’t prophetised or predicted in any of those books in the family library in the west wing of the house. They only spoke about breakthroughs, progress and development. An end to suffering. A cleansing of disease. A sterilised and synthesised vision of an artificial and manufactured utopia. All laid out in neat and tidy numerical equations, which never tallied with my own experiences on this and other continents.

I don’t blame my parents or my family for that. They only wanted what they thought was best for me. Their expectations were only things which they had been conditioned through their cosseted environment to expect me to accept and to achieve. Clearly, as the ruins of the city show, they were not alone in that.

No. My rejection of those expectations were not a rejection of their love. Nor was it a rejection of my love for them. Quite the opposite. Standing here now, after nearly fifty years away, I see and feel their true presence and not the one which the bubble of their society forced them to dress up and present. In those vines, I see their strength. In those lawns of wild flowers, I see their natural beauty. And in the moss, the lichen and in the mycelium, I see we are all one with infinity.

Yes. It truly is beautiful.

Hasta la primavera, para siempre.

After 18 Years of Observing Mama by Olivia Rahal

Olivia Rahal is an incoming freshman student at the University of Oklahoma, double majoring in Acting and English: Writing. She has studied Acting at the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute for two years, where she was surrounded by many artistic disciplines; creative writing especially sparked her interest.


After 18 Years of Observing Mama

In my 18 years, Mama began as
crinkling brown butcher paper:
the kind used to conceal a quaint christmas gift,
neat and admirable:
temporary qualities.
Soon, the paper takes on
edges, creases, and points.

Mama’s neatness acts temporary.
I watched it fade so quickly, I am
baffled to still find its abundance
preserved in time:
photos taken before my 18 years.
Perhaps that moved me to so highly esteem pictures.
Pictures steal the fleeting from the clock;
the momentary morphs into a higher form:
permanence.

Mama can not endure permanence,
yet her perfect, pressed, platinum hair on
school picture day
survives,
Now, Mama begins to crinkle.
Her pale skin swallows her tired eyes.
God never gave her tired eyes.
Perhaps the fatigue, too, will fade —
temporary.

I wonder what other temporaries My Mama holds.

Locust by Raymond Byrnes

Raymond Byrnes managed communications for many years for the U.S. Geological Survey/NASA Landsat satellite program. His recent poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Shot Glass Journal, Panoply, Typishly, Waters Deep: A Great Lakes Poetry Anthology, and elsewhere. He lives in Virginia.


Locust

That locust on the hill
the one nearly wide
as tall, waves a thousand
moss-green feathers
each one a hundred leaves.

Every feather sways in rhythm
with the wind, but not like
frantic pom-poms shaken
at the game; more like how
Aretha’s boa shimmied
when she took her bows.

Forget Zombies. Odor-Causing Germs Are Out to Get You by James Barr

James is a freelance writer and survivor of two long stints at two renowned advertising agencies. His conversation is sprinkled with features and benefits and always ends with a call to action.


Forget Zombies.

Odor-Causing Germs Are Out to Get You.

The world’s gone zany with zombies. They’re popping up in movies, music, on TV and staggering all over social media. Without question, those frisky folks are lurching into our lives almost everywhere. Of course, no one has ever really seen one. And the last time I checked, no one has fallen off their earthly perch due to “Zombie Bite, Zombie Nibble, Zombie Death Hug” or even “Asphyxiation Due to Close Proximity to Zombie Breath.” So let’s continue to keep a wary eye out for these nasty ragamuffins, but turn our attention to a far more ominous threat: odor-causing germs.

These relentless microscopic troublemakers are everywhere and they’re not going down easily. Unlike zombies, you can actually see odor-causing germs if you happen to have a medical grade electron microscope somewhere in your home.

I know about these germs because I once was an ad agency copywriter tasked with creating nationwide angst about them. My client had created a new product aimed at killing them while claiming they were lurking all over your kitchen floors and in your toilets. The telltale sign that you had them? You could actually smell their presence.

My task was to create TV commercials that made your hair stand on end because you learned your home was Club Med for these invasive little critters. Then, we wanted you to leap out of your Barcalounger and dash down to your grocery store to buy the product.

My client was unsure of the efficacy of their new creation, however, so they opted for a test market in Milwaukee. This would allow them to test the appeal of their new product in a scaled-back, less expensive setting before launching an ad campaign on national TV.

From the very beginning, I had two concerns about the product. The fragrance was a blend of an impossibly pine-scented forest with the earthy, pungent aroma of an earthworm farm. Strong enough to curl nose hairs, it got you thinking one of the yams in the potato basket had gone bad.

My other concern was that the product wasn’t just stinky. It was also sticky. Shortly after the advertising began, complaints began pouring in about how the product nearly peeled soles from shoes. Several people said their young children actually got stuck on the kitchen floor and couldn’t move until their shoes were removed. A recent Milwaukee census showed a population drop, but I beg to differ. I think the missing people are still there, but can’t open the door to the census taker because they’re stuck to their floors.

Maybe this is a perfect time for a hair-raising zombie scare. Cue the vampires, too. If they really do exist, let’s turn ‘em all loose and get those folks moving again.

With or without their shoes.